Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship

with Sophia Balakian

hosted by Brittany White and Chris Gratien

| The word "refugee" might conjure images of families devastated by war fleeing their homeland. But what happens when those who seek asylum abroad do not conform to that image? As Sophia Balakian argues in her new book Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship, the question is one that shapes the case of every refugee seeking a new home abroad in the United States. The Somali and Congolese migrants in her study face an intense vetting process that includes DNA testing to confirm that a refugee family forms a biological unit, creating numerous reasons by which people who have survived war and displacement may be judged "fraudulent" family units. In this episode, Balakian is back on the podcast to share an anthropologist's perspective on the history of migration and the politics of kinship in refugee resettlement.   

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The word "refugee" might conjure images of families devastated by war fleeing their homeland. But what happens when those who seek asylum abroad do not conform to that image? As Sophia Balakian argues in her new book Unsettled Families, the question is one that shapes the case of every refugee seeking a new home abroad in the United States. The Somali and Congolese migrants in her study face an intense vetting process that includes DNA testing to confirm that a refugee family forms a biological unit, creating numerous reasons by which people who have survived war and displacement may be judged "fraudulent" family units. In this episode, Balakian is back on the podcast to share an anthropologist's perspective on the history of migration and the politics of kinship in refugee resettlement.

Contributor Bios

	Sophia Balakian is a scholar of migration and an assistant professor at George Mason University. Her book, Unsettled Families, was recognized as a 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
	Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century.
	Brittany White is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Virginia. Broadly, she is interested in the African Diaspora in former Ottoman territories.

Credits

Episode No. 579
Release Date: 22 January 2025
Recording Location: University of Virginia
Sound production and music by Chris Gratien. Closing music by A.A. Aalto
Bibliography courtesy of Sophia Balakian

Further Listening

	Sophia Balakian	469 7/29/20	Refugee Families in the Era of Global Security
	Hikmet Kocamaner	358 4/17/18	Politics of the Family in the New Turkey
	Zeynep Gürsel	502 6/9/21	Portraits of Unbelonging collaboration with AnthroPod
	Randa Tawil	536 1/21/23	Recovering Migrant Histories
	Rawan Arar, Andrew Arsan, Reem Bailony, Neda Maghbouleh	436 11/25/19	Narrating Migration
	Sumayya Kassamali	373 8/19/18	Migrant Labor in Contemporary Beirut
	Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky	566 8/29/24	North Caucasian Refugees and the Late Ottoman State
	Emily Pope-Obeda	371 8/17/18	The Rise of the American Deportation State

Further Reading

Abdi, Cawo M. 2015. Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Al-Bulushi, Samar. 2021. “Citizen-Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya.” American Anthropologist. 123 (4): 819–832.

Briggs, Laura. 2020. Taking Children: A History of American Terror. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gottlieb, Alma. 2004. The Afterlife Is Where We Come from: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Horst, Cindy. 2006. “Buufis amongst Somalis in Dadaab: The Transnational and Historical Logics behind Resettlement Dreams.” Journal of Refugee Studies 19 (2): 143–157.

Kohler-Haussman, Julilly. 2007. “‘The Crime of Survival’: Fraud Prosecutions, Community Surveillance, and the Original ‘Welfare Queen.’” Journal of Social History 41 (2): 329–354.

Pope-Obeda, Emily. 2021. “‘Let Them Deport Me, I Will Come Back to Him Again’: Romance, Affective Relations, and the US Deportation Regime, 1919–1935.” In Emotional Landscapes: Love, Gender, and Migration. Edited by Marcelo J. Borges, Sonia Cancian, and Linda Reeder, 112–130. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. 2018. “A Legal History: The Emergence of the African Resettlement Candidate in International Refugee Management.” In Refugee Resettlement: Power, Politics, and Humanitarian Governance. Edited by Adèle Garnier, Liliana Lyra Jubilut, and Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, 46–69. New York: Berghahn Books.

Speed, Shannon. 2006. “At the Crossroads of Human Rights and Anthropology: Toward a Critically Engaged Activist Research.” American Anthropologist 108 (1): 66–76.